The Chico Police Department is pursuing the possibility of creating and hosting a 40-hour crisis intervention class for local and regional officers.
Chief Matt Madden told the City Council this week that the plan would be more affordable than sending officers out of town for de-escalation training.
“The bottom line is — the issue with this type of training, it’s the overtime that you gotta cover the streets. And so, even if we do that, we’re still going to have a cost associated,” he said. “But, again, if we’re not sending them all the way down — right now the only CIT trainings that are up online on POST, of course, Covid’s got them all shut down, is the Bay Area and Southern California.”
Without an in-house course, Madden said the overtime costs associated with training all the department's officers would total about $280,000.
Vice Mayor Alex Brown requested information about training earlier this year, saying she wanted to see the department pursue the local training concept.